Category: books
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Book Review: The Love Haters by Katherine Center
First, thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC ebook of this new novel, soon to be published on May 20, 2025. For Katherine Center fans everywhere, I am sure this will be another smash hit! This is my third book by Katherine Center, who by her own admission is a writer…
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Book Review: The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods (a/k/a Evie Gaughan)
The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris is my second book by Evie Woods, although I am a bit confused whether #2 is the chicken or the egg. I loved her first (?) book, The Lost Bookshop. It was the perfect blend of a dual timeline, half contemporary and half historical, with a dash of…
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Book Review: A Happy Catastrophe by Maddie Dawson
Happy. Hopeful. Depressing. Sad. Melancholy. Engaging. Frenetic. Anxious. Tedious. Mad. Bored. Chaotic. These are all things I felt while reading Maddie Dawson’s 2020 novel A Happy Catastrophe, published by Lake Union Publishing. (Disclosure: I purchased this book on Amazon for my Kindle.) As is sometimes the case, I found out after I had finished it…
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My Top Ten of 2024
With only two days of 2024 left, I think my reading stats are pretty set in stone, unless I finish off one more book before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve so I can end on an even number. I had a good reading year but my total number of books is a bit…
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A Very Merry Bookmas!
It’s Christmas Day! I’ve had a wonderful Advent and now Christmas season with my family and close friends. It has to be the most relaxed Christmas I’ve ever had, having retired from teaching this January 12, 2024, I came into Advent this year without reams of papers to grade, midterms to create and then grade,…
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Book Review: The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn
One of my husband’s nicknames for me is “dolphin girl.” I love the water. I love being in the water swimming laps or just relaxing. I love being on the water in a boat, a ship, a ferry, a cruiseliner, anything. And, somewhat contrary to all of that, I also have a slight obsession with…
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Book Review—The Paris Girl: The Young Woman Who Outwitted the Nazis and Became a WWII Hero by Francelle Bradford White
When I look back through the list of nonfiction books I’ve read over the last few years, I am drawn to those titles where the author disseminates information about a topic in a narrative style not unlike a piece of historical fiction. At the top of that list (for me) would be: and others. These…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 